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History

About the organization

APME is an association of editors at news media organizations in the United States and Canada. It works closely with The Associated Press to foster journalism excellence and to support a national network for the training and development of editors who will run multimedia newsrooms in the 21st century. The association has held a multi-day conference every year since 1933 in various cities around the U.S. and Canada. Our elected officers serve as national leaders in speaking out on journalism issues. APME also provides feedback to the worldwide cooperative directly and through the Sounding Board. APME is a nonprofit, tax-exempt association under Section 501(c)(6) of the Internal Revenue Code. Any person who is the editor, executive editor or managing editor, or holds any other title that provides for senior responsibilities for the news, online or editorial staffs of a member organization, is eligible for membership. APME is on the front line in setting ethical and journalistic standards for newspapers and in the battle for freedom of information and the First Amendment.

APME is born in a bar

By Bob Haiman
APME Regents

It began in 1930, over a drink in a convention hotel bar.

Managing Editors Roy Roberts of the Kansas City Star and Oliver Owen Kuhn of the Washington Star were attending the annual meeting in New York that was then called Newspaper Week.

Publishers gathered then mostly to talk about ad sales and circulation, and to complain about newsprint prices and labor costs.

Some of them attended The Associated Press board meetings, which focused mostly on memberships, territories and AP assessments.

Almost nothing was said about journalism or the content of newspapers or of the AP wire. Managing editors like Kuhn and Roberts who attended with their publishers got to enjoy some nice cocktail parties and dinners but found it almost impossible to discuss news coverage or to vent their complaints about AP's news performance.

"I asked Oliver,” Roberts said of the discussion over that drink, "why in the world didn't the managing editors have an informal conference with AP heads and get their gripes out of their systems?” The AP president (Kuhn's boss) and the AP general manager, Kent Cooper, agreed and the first meeting was set to take place the next year, during Newspaper Week 1931.

About 30 editors came, along with virtually all of the AP's news managers.

It did not go particularly well.

There was no formal agenda. After some introductory pleasantries, the editors starting unloading, firing critical questions - most were sharply barbed, derogatory criticisms and some were more like personal attacks - at the AP executives. It was not a civil discourse. Kuhn later said, "… A certain gentleman from the Southland and a certain esteemed AP editor almost came to blows.”

There was some question that a second meeting could even be held because so many AP managers felt as if they had taken so much unjustified abuse. In effect, what was to eventually become APME almost died for lack of a second.

But tempers cooled and it was decided to hold another meeting in New York in 1932. To avoid a repeat of the hostilities, AP editors and the managing editors began to sketch out a plan: They would meet separately from the publishers and the AP board. Instead of editors just standing up and letting loose, there would be committees of editors looking at the wire report — domestic news, foreign, Washington, state, business, features and photos, writing quality, etc. - during the year.

These committees would prepare written reports and present them at the annual meeting. The goal would be to create a useful, professional scrutiny - cleansed of personal whim, bias and vitriol — to which the AP could react and thus improve its service to member papers.

It was time to hold the first true convention.

1931: Editors and AP managers meet for first time, but not successfully.

2006: APME meets in New Orleans a year after Hurricane Katrina and honors two top local editors.

2006: Best ideas from Credibility Roundtables published in book, "Building Trust in the News; 101+ Good Ideas for Editors from Editors.”

2007: APME holds first conference in Washington, D.C.

2007: APME presents first Innovator of the Year Award.

2008: APME partners with University of Missouri J School for major survey about credibility of online journalism.

2008: APME partners with Taxpayers for Common Sense, leads national reporting effort on earmarks.

2010-11: Partnered with The Associated Press to launch the Broken
Budgets reporting initiative, exploring the fiscal crises in state and
local governments. Led to AP-APME projects in Pennsylvania, Illinois and
other states.

2011: The organization's name changed to Associated Press Media
Editors and the board approved expanding its ranks to include
AP-broadcast news leaders, college journalism educators and college
student editors.

2011-12: Partnered with The Associated Press to launch the Aging America reporting initiative.

2017: Washington, D.C., was the site for the ASNE/APME/APPM News Leadership Conference.

2018: During the ASNE/APME News Leadership Conference in Austin, Texas, the memberships officially voted to merge the two news leaders organizations in 2019. The new organization will be called the News Leaders Association. The foundations will remain separate, for now.